Solutions for Teachers

Supporting and Retaining New Teachers

Today's teachers face unprecedented challenges. Not only are they expected to manage classrooms, student behavior, curriculum, and parent conferences and work collaboratively with colleagues, they are also expected to teach challenging content to high standards and ensure all students meet or exceed rigorous learning expectations. And this is just as true for new teachers, those in their first three years of practice, as it is for accomplished veteran educators.

There is no doubt that the bar for teachers is raised higher than ever before. There is also no doubt that far too many new teachers are leaving the profession prematurely, because the reality of teaching is out of sync with their perceptions, because of salary issues, or for a host of other issues. With each turnover, schools and districts lose money and students lose ground. Addressing this will require scaling support for new teachers through mentors/new teacher coaches who, supported by Teachscape facilitators, will:

• Provide training and support for new teachers as they learn and apply proven classroom management strategies they need to survive and thrive in their first critical years of practice
• Ensure new teachers have opportunities to develop critical instructional knowledge and skills
• Use data to assess the progress of the new teachers over time and inform their practice as mentors

Teachscape offers support for this solution by providing experienced and expert facilitators who will work with new teacher mentors/coaches to scale support consistently across new teacher groups and facilitate the development of predictable and measurable knowledge and skills. This work will be offered through face-to-face and online studies, informed and guided by online resources and by coaching the mentors as they work directly with new teachers in their schools.

Provide Support for New Teacher Mentors as They Focus New Teachers on Effective Classroom Management Strategies: Classroom management is the greatest concern of beginning teachers as they struggle to establish the classroom environments, procedures, and rules that will support effective teaching and learning. Teachscape coaches will work with the new teacher mentors to:

• Help new teachers understand the impact of classroom arrangements on teaching and learning. Using Teachscape online resources as a common core of knowledge and skills, new teacher mentors will work with Teachscape coaches to develop and implement professional learning sessions for new teachers. The common core of online content will promote consistency and coherence as efforts are scaled and will also offer the new teachers ongoing support as they analyze and reflect—on demand—on the featured, research-based, and proven classroom arrangement practices.
• Offer support in developing procedures, rules, and consequences for violating these. Teachscape coaches will work closely with the mentors as they use the online resources to deepen their understanding of research-based strategies to develop classroom procedures, rules, and effective strategies for defining and applying transparent consequences for violating these. Teachscape will then provide support as the new teacher mentors frame and implement plans for helping the new teachers understand and apply the featured content.

Provide Support for Mentors as They Help Teachers Develop Critical Instructional Knowledge and Skills: Once the initial concerns of new teachers relative to classroom management have been addressed, the focus has to shift to beginning the ongoing process of becoming highly capable practitioners. Teachscape coaches will provide training and support to the new teachers mentors to enable them to:

• Identify specific, core teacher behaviors that support effective teaching and determine effective ways to help new teachers understand and incorporate these into their practice. Using the online resources to inform and guide their work, the mentors and, through them, the new teachers, will identify and apply research-based teaching behaviors proven to improve teaching and learning.
• Identify and promote strategies, techniques, and practices that build student engagement and maintain student focus. Because engaged students learn more effectively, new teachers need to learn how to engage their students and help them maintain focus. Teachscape will build professional learning for the new teacher mentors, guided by the online resources, and will support the mentors as they develop strategies for helping new teachers engage students.
• Use student achievement data to address student learning needs and inform instructional groupings and decision making. Because using data to inform instructional decisions is a core element of effective teaching, Teachscape will offer new teacher mentors a coherent approach to thinking about student data in a way that won't overwhelm the new teachers. Teachscape will also support the mentors as they work directly with the new teachers to analyze student data, discuss the implications, and frame approaches to instruction that are guided by the data.

Provide Support for Mentors as They Use Data to Assess the Progress of New Teachers: To ensure the continuous growth and development of new teachers, mentors must relentlessly track their progress and use these data to inform next steps in the development of new teachers. Teachscape coaches will support this process by:

• Providing new teacher-focused walkthrough tools to enable efficient data collection. By customizing the standard Classroom Walkthrough tool, the new teacher mentors have an effective and efficient way to gather and analyze data on the implementation of the featured practices. Teachscape consultants will work closely with the mentors to identify the walkthrough "look fors" that reflect the research-based practices.
• Supporting mentors as they analyze and apply the walkthrough data to inform their ongoing work with new teachers, as they frame conclusions about the data and share these with the new teachers to determine next steps.